<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Depereo - You’ll either die or wish you had. by Calleo</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28724892">Depereo - You’ll either die or wish you had.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calleo/pseuds/Calleo'>Calleo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Magical Theory [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Wizarding World - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Curses, Gen, Magic, Magical Theory (Harry Potter), Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter), Unforgivable Curses (Harry Potter)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:41:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>812</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28724892</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calleo/pseuds/Calleo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If you really want to ruin someone's life...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Magical Theory [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2010046</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Depereo - You’ll either die or wish you had.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Depereo</em> is one of those curses that, if you get me going, you’ll find I think it’s one that deserves a higher status than it has. The status that it currently has is—essentially the response of, “What?” From the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.</p><p> </p><p></p><div class="post-content">
  <p><em>Depereo</em>’s effects depend entirely on what it is the caster wants to do to the victim and depends on which incantation they use.<br/>Use <em>Depereo</em>, and you’re going to kill yourself or wish you had, because that is the first person active form. I perish or, if you want to be dramatic, “I am utterly ruined.”</p>
  <p>While you <em>could</em> do that, it would be a bit mad.</p>
  <p><em>Deperis</em>, however, is the incantation you’d use if you were intending to damage <em>someone else</em>. Neither incantation requires line of sight, just a clarity as to who the intended victim is.</p>
  <p>Regardless of which incantation you choose, the effect will be distinctly different depending on your intent.</p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>If your intent is simply to kill the target, that’s all that will happen; it functions, essentially, like <em>Avada Kedavra</em> but without the gaudy green light. <em>Depereo </em>produces no visual or auditory effect. It doesn’t even really cause the same ‘rush of air’ and lingering coldness effect that <em>Avada Kedavra</em> does.</p>
  <p>What it leaves behind in the case of a single target death is an unsettling and vaguely confusing energy to the room, which dissipates within five or ten minutes. Personally, I’ve always interpreted that feeling as the curse itself asking a silent, “Are you <em>sure</em> that’s what you wanted to do?”</p>
  <p>That interpretation makes a bit more sense when you know the other route the curse can take if you know how to handle it and are properly vindictive.</p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>It can be used to completely destroy someone’s life; not literally but <em>figuratively.</em></p>
  <p>When used with that intent the curse does absolutely nothing to the target directly and instead will seek out anything and anyone the target loves, likes, associates with, or even passively knows and that isn’t even the most interesting way it acts. What it does to those people, places, things, even pets, is highly randomised and will only happen in the presence of the person actually cursed.</p>
  <p>Death, financial ruin, natural disaster in those ‘that was a freak occurrence!’ sorts of ways, accidental but severe injury, generalised bad luck, generalised failures, relationship failures, pets go missing or turn up dead after contact with the curse’s target, any person the target comes into contact with may simply drop dead, go missing, or die days or weeks later, and it all happens in a way that doesn’t seem to have any actual connection to the person who was cursed.</p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>The nature of <em>Depereo/Deperis</em> using this method is, by design, meant to seem highly randomised and leaves random intervals between strokes of “bad luck” to keep the curse’s victim from noticing a pattern and potentially starting to wonder if they might, in fact, be cursed.  After awhile, most people will start to realise that the only consistent feature in all of the things listed above is themself.</p>
  <p>However, <em>Depereo/Deperis</em> is deceptive in that when that realisation starts to come to light, the curse itself will actively work to convince the victim that it’s nothing magical in nature, it truly is their fault. This typically leads to self-isolation and, occasionally, suicide, the latter of which breaks the curse.</p>
  <p>Not much <em>else</em> does, however.</p>
  <p><em>Depereo/Deperis</em> does not show up in standard checks, none of the known blanket protective charms against Dark Magic affect it nor will they be set off or alert someone; it simply passes through unobstructed.</p>
  <p><em>Finite Incantatem </em>has no effect.</p>
  <p>Any texts that mention the curse note this, and the majority of those texts come to the conclusion of “No known block. No known counter.”</p>
  <p>That’s not <em>strictly</em> true.</p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>There are a few texts that are a blend of standard Dark Arts work and Blood Magic; they dislike being called ‘hybrid texts’ as an aside that’s probably only interesting to me.</p>
  <p>In <em>those</em> texts, there is a counter, albeit a convoluted almost backward seeming one that modifies more standard blood based protection magic and turns it outward instead of inward; instead of you being protected from harm, as would be more standard, the modified rituals protect anyone who has the misfortune of having to come into contact with you either purposely or just on virtue of you existing in the world, from you.</p>
  <p>Specifically, from you under the effects of <em>Depereo/Deperis</em>.</p>
  <p>It’s also interesting to note that standard Blood Magic protections do not protect someone else from using <em>Depereo/Deperis</em> against you; the best you can manage is, if you suspect it’s happened, is hope you either already know the modified rituals or can get your hands on them without whoever you contact about it dying first.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>